


Phorliss Cantina

by JediMordsith



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, One Shot, Sadness, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-25 00:24:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17110937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JediMordsith/pseuds/JediMordsith
Summary: Response to a tumblr prompt: “In a Phorliss cantina one Mara Jade unequivocally loathes all of the Luke Skywalker holothrillers. All of them. Except one.”





	Phorliss Cantina

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr ages ago, but wanted to put it here for easy reference, too.

_Luke Skywalker and the Mystery on Naboo_ might be one of the most ridiculously awful trope-fests she’s ever seen in her life, but Mara can’t bring herself to hate it.

It’s the only evidence left in the galaxy that she was once loved.

Force only knows how that di’kut Geptun got his grubby rebel hands on the footage. (He probably stole it from an Imperial records repository somewhere. Damn rebels hadn’t the morals of a gundark between them.) His claims that he selected it to add “authenticity” to the drama are suspect, as well, she thinks. But whatever his true motives and wherever he scrounged it from, the quality is immaculate. Mara’s image is etched in the holo frame as sharp and clear as Vorsian crystal.

She doesn’t look like herself, of course. She’d worked on that disguise for days with the single-minded enthusiasm of the fourteen-year-old that she’d been. But in the end, it had been perfect. Her skin was perfectly tinted the blush pink of Naboo’s best blossom wine; her hair and eyes shine a meticulously selected shade of cobalt. Her artistically cut, champagne-hued dress and skillfully made-up face give the illusion of maturity to the curves she hadn’t quite properly grown into yet.

Mara pauses the holo and stares distantly at the poised girl sitting demurely at the Emperor’s feet. Traces the invisible line of his gaze from the smooth, soft skin of her bare shoulders to his face. His smile. Even now, in the slovenly little hovel of a room above the cantina, she remembers with absolute clarity the glorious nimbus of pride that surrounded her that trip. It was her reward – attending the Empire Day celebration with her Master on his home planet. She doesn’t know now what she’d done to earn it. That part of the memory has been lost, sucked into one of the gaping black holes that pock her once flawless recall.

The ghost of a smile brushes Mara’s lips. She has not lost the remembrance of the distinct shade of scarlet Isard turned when she turned up to see the Emperor off and found his young Hand at his side. Mara remembers, too, giving her a saccharine sweet smile and bobbing an impertinent curtsy before turning her back and gliding up the ramp to her master’s private shuttle.

Mara unpauses the holo and lets the music flow over her. The volume is set to low, but it doesn’t matter. In her mind, the tune merges with another. The song in her mind is hazier, as if she were tipsy or maybe a bit drugged while listening to it, and paired with the sensation of spinning. Whirling.

_He let me dance,_ she thinks, vaguely. _For his guests, at the lake house that night. They all stared like I really was a Zeltron, perfuming the air with pheromones with every spin._

A fresh echo of that old, beloved pride wafts across her parched soul. She doesn’t remember how the night ended. Doesn’t remember much of the rest of the trip, if she is honest. There are too many holes. Too many fuzzy, blurred patches; she no longer knows if they were ever clear, or if they were hazy even as she lived them. He was so strong, her Master. Sometimes his strength overwhelmed her without his realizing it. She’d never held it against him.

Her heart clenched. If only she’d been stronger. If only she’d been _gifted_ , like Vader. Powerful enough to replace that mechanical monster, so her Master could have a _real_ apprentice. Powerful enough to stop Skywalker on Tatooine, before he slaughtered her Master in cold blood and shattered her life. Her mind.

Her eyes drift listlessly over the holo. The Emperor is looking at her again, and there is only approval in his wrinkled face. He had always known her limits and forgiven her for them, even as he continuously pushed her to do better. He had known, even at the moment of his death, that Mara was the one person who would never betray him. That was why he’d chosen her to carry the burden of avenging him. That was why he’d loved her.

Her Master was gone now, his Empire with him. But she remained. Fractured and despoiled, but not gone. Other memories came and went, warped and splintered as she endured the hellish cycles of gaining and losing her grasp on the Force. But this one stayed constant, unwavering and unsoiled. Because it was there, in the holo, clear as Vorsian crystal for all the galaxy to see: she, Mara Jade, had been loved.

In the dank emptiness of the cantina’s attic, Mara rewound the holo and started again.


End file.
